Writing Screenplays

My computer-genius son created this blog for me because recently he has found me talking a good deal about the screenplay: its conception, its writing, its rewriting, and its eventual fate. Not surprisingly, having worked in the Hollywood film business for fifteen years, I have some rather strong views on these subjects, which I will endeavor to set down here from time to time. I do this partly to organize my own thinking on the matter (perhaps as the basis for an eventual book), and partly because I receive many requests each year for advice and guidance about screenplay writing, as well as receiving many scripts by aspiring screenwriters for my comments and notes.

Now, I must say that, until recently, I had never read a book on the writing of screenplays, though I had often heard them discussed. And so, in general terms, I was familiar with the approaches which the standard texts have taken. But I always found myself at a bit of a loss when I was serving on panels or presenting seminars on screenplay writing, and others asked me what I thought of so-and-so's views about structure or character or plot. I simply had never read their works, though some are considered classics in the field.

Finally, last summer, while in a bookshop, I bought a book on screenwriting both because I felt an obligation at least to familiarize myself with what such gurus were saying, and because, frankly, it had an engaging cover. It was written by a man who, I gather, offers as his chief claim to fame the fact that he has had meetings with Steven Spielberg. I made a point of reading it soon thereafter, and what I found there, I found appalling.

Aside from a certain glibness, the book had no value or appeal. The author has, in my view at least, virtually no insight into the art of screenwriting, nor very much to say about the process. So far as I can tell, having failed as a screenwriter, he decided to make his living telling other people how to do what he, apparently, has been unable to do successfully.

Nonetheless, what this author said jibes with what I was able to glean from my many conversations about screenwriting books with those who have read them and rely on them, and it is this: The screenplay is a form of mechanism, and if you assemble the parts in the right order according to certain formulae, it will become a thing of beauty and a source of wealth.

(This is how most writers of screenwriting books appear to regard the process, and so, it is also how most executives in the industry regard it: Involve enough people in the writing process and the work will somehow blossom into life. Which is rather like saying that if you involve enough engineers in the design of a car, it will one day stand on its rear tires and dance.)

To my mind this is nonsense. It violates everything I believe or think or intuit about writing. A screenplay is not a machine, its parts are not mechanical, and there are no formulae for assembling them into a whole. This is where I part company with those who have made a living, not writing films, but telling others how to write them.

A screenplay, to my way of thinking, is an organic being - a living thing. Its creation cannot be approached mechanistically any more than you can raise a child, or cultivate a garden, or grow wine grapes mechanically. Yes, there are certain recognizable rules to help you avoid the worst of mistakes, but these exist only to bring you into that arena in which the organic being of the work can be focused upon and made to flourish. For example, it may be enough to point out that you should not feed babies on gin, or that you cannot grow vegetables in deep shade, or that you must prune vines in order to get the results that you want. But apart from such broad, and fairly obvious, generalizations, the fostering of living beings has more to do with imagination, thought, feeling , hope, despair, invention, inspiration, care, insight, truthfulness, and love than it does with what part goes where, or how to arrive at a plot point on page sixty.

And so I have called this site The Art of the Screenplay because I regard writing in general, and screenwriting in particular, as a form of art. It is the creation of a living organism, akin to the creation of children, or the incarnation of an idea - verbum caro factum est - the word made flesh. The process is analogous to how life on earth occurs: An organic vessel is created which permits the indwelling of a living spirit, or, alternatively, a living truth finds an organic vessel through which it can express itself. This, to my mind at least, is how human beings are made, and it is the only way I know in which living art can be made. And since I believe that the screenplay is, or can be, or ought to be a form of art, this is how I think screenplays should be written.

I will try to define this process, or characterize it, or provide insight into it in this site, for the benefit of those who wish to write screenplays, or, having written them, wish to find a new way to approach their work. But do not seek here easy, ironclad rules for the construction of that blockbuster which will earn your Oscar or secure your fortune. Instead, look for a challenge to probe deeper into yourself, as a writer and as a human being; indeed, to search deep into your soul for the source and spirit of your work. For that, I truly believe, is where the sources of all true art reside. As W. B. Yeats said about finding his inspiration: I will lie down where all the ladders start/ In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

My fondest hope is that the thoughts in these electronic pages may help you to descend that ladder, in order that you may learn how to climb up again reborn as a writer.